2015 ORS
676.400¹

Racial and ethnic composition of regulated health professions

• findings

• duties of health professional regulatory boards

(1) It is the intention of the Legislative Assembly to achieve the goal of universal access to adequate levels of high quality health care at an affordable cost for all Oregonians, regardless of ethnic or cultural background.

(2) The Legislative Assembly finds that:

(a) Access to health care is of value when it leads to treatment that substantially improves health outcomes;

(b) Health care is most effective when it accounts for the contribution of culture to health status and health outcomes;

(c) Ethnic and racial minorities experience more than their statistically fair share of undesirable health outcomes;

(d) The lack of licensed health care professionals from ethnic and racial minorities or who are bilingual contributes to the inadequacy of health outcomes in communities of color in this state; and

(e) The development of a partnership between health professional regulatory boards and communities of color to increase the representation of people of color and bilingual people in health care professions has significant potential to improve the health outcomes of people of color and bilingual citizens of this state.

(3) Health professional regulatory boards shall establish programs to increase the representation of people of color and bilingual people on the boards and in the professions that they regulate. Such programs must include activities to promote the education, recruitment and professional practice of members of these targeted populations in Oregon.

(4) Each health professional regulatory board shall maintain records of the racial and ethnic makeup of applicants and professionals regulated by the board. Such information shall be requested from applicants and the professionals regulated who shall be informed in writing that the provision of such information is voluntary and not required.

2 OregonLaws.org contains the con­tents of Volume 21 of the ORS,
inserted along­side the per­tin­ent statutes.
See the preface to the ORS An­no­ta­tions for more information.

3 OregonLaws.org assembles these lists by analyzing references between Sections. Each
listed item refers back to the current Section in its own text. The result reveals
relationships in the code that may not have otherwise been apparent.